• The Lompoc Valley Democratic Club is holding its second annual fundraiser Wine with a Democratic View on Sunday, July 6, from 2 to 5 p.m. The event will be held at a hilltop home in the Village Country Club area and the cost is $35. For more information, call Mary Brooks at 733-3462, or leave a message at 291-3007. Funds raised at the event will help cover this year’s office expenses.
• On June 26, U.S. Rep. Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara) led efforts against a bill that would expand offshore drilling nationwide and specifically targets new drilling leases off the coast of Santa Barbara County. The bill passed in the House of Representatives on what Capps calls largely partisan lines. “This bill is yet another example of the House majority’s backward energy policy that doubles down on dirty fossil fuels instead of investing in a clean energy future,” Capps said in a press release. Meanwhile, in the California Legislature, Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson was a little more successful in her quest to ban offshore drilling from an area of the Santa Barbara Channel know as Tranquillon Ridge. The bill passed out of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee on June 26 and heads to the Appropriations Committee next.
This article appears in Jul 3-10, 2014.